1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a liquid-jet head chip, a liquid-jet head, and a liquid-jet recording apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
A liquid-jet recording apparatus, which uses a liquid-jet head having a plurality of discharge nozzles for discharging a liquid such as an ink therefrom to record characters or images on a recording medium, is conventionally known. In general, an ink-jet head includes an actuator substrate, a cover plate substrate, and an ink flow path member. The actuator substrate includes a plurality of discharge grooves. The cover plate substrate forms an ink path. The ink flow path member includes a common liquid chamber for supplying the ink to each of the discharge grooves through the cover plate substrate. The ink-jet head is formed by bonding the actuator substrate, the cover plate substrate, and the ink flow path member to each other in a laminated manner in a thickness direction (for example, see JP 2007-30495 A; hereinafter, referred to as “Patent Document 1”).
In the conventional ink-jet head, when a foreign substance removal filter is provided in a liquid supply chamber of the ink flow path member, the amount of ink supply to the common liquid chamber tends to become insufficient due to air bubbles which are too large to pass through the foreign substance removal filter. To cope with such a problem, the ink-jet head described in Patent Document 1 includes an air-bubble exhaust path formed in the ink flow path member. Through the air-bubble exhaust path, air bubbles accumulated at the upstream of the foreign substance removal filter are exhausted to the exterior. At the same time, a negative-pressure retention filter is provided in the air-bubble exhaust path to retain a negative pressure in the ink flow path member.
However, when the negative-pressure retention filter is provided in the ink flow path member or in an additional separate component outside the ink-jet head as in the case of the conventional ink-jet head, there is a problem in that a shape of the ink flow path member becomes complicated or the number of components is increased. There is another problem in that the size of the ink-jet head cannot be reduced, thereby disadvantageously increasing manufacturing cost.